Fed Up with the Dog Libel

Falconry, Facts, and Fiction

The other day my son got a welcome break from Lebanon to come home. Naturally, I am very worried about the new FPV drones from Hezbollah that Israel is struggling to defend against, and last night we were talking at dinner about various ways of countering drones. I noted that in other countries, there have been several initiatives of training eagles and falcons to grab drones out of the air and drop them off at a specified location. However, for various reasons, this would not be a practical approach for the IDF to use with Hezbollah’s drones. Which is a pity, because working with eagles is amazing!

(Meanwhile, on the topic of interacting with amazing animals, there are Sherut Leumi opportunities available at the Biblical Museum of Natural History next year. For details, write to office@biblicalnaturalhistory.org.)

In the course of the conversation, I pointed out that one of the challenges of training birds of prey is that they are only motivated by food. Accordingly, falconers use scales to measure exactly how much the bird weighs, because it will only perform when it is sufficiently hungry. I offhandedly mentioned that the English term “fed up” comes from falconry; it refers to a bird that has had enough to eat and is therefore uncooperative.

At this point, my youngest daughter interrupted. “Aba, that sounds totally made up! What proof do you have that that’s where ‘fed up’ comes from?”

Well, I didn’t remember where I read it, and I didn’t actually have any proof. But, as I explained to her, it’s a plausible historical explanation for a term that is otherwise difficult to explain, so why not believe it? Plus, it’s not as though there is any drawback to accepting it as the explanation.

The correct approach to evaluating claims is of particular significance with another animal-related matter - the accusation by Nick Kristoff in the New York Times that Israel’s prison officers used dogs to rape male Palestinian prisoners. It fills me with disgust to write about it. But there are unfortunately dangerous falsehoods that need to be straightened out.

The story was met with widespread derision. Kristoff responded by citing references in scientific literature to dogs having intercourse with humans, including one that was trained by a specialist dog trainer to sexually assault women under Pinochet’s regime in Chile. But, without getting into gruesome detail, suffice it to say that the stories were not comparable. There are physical differences between male and female humans, and physical and behavioral differences between male humans and male dogs, alongside other differences in circumstances and in the descriptions of what happened in each case. And the general view of experts in canine behavior (as a simple AI query will tell you) is that dogs cannot be trained to rape men.

Now, here’s where some people go wrong. Pro-Israel and anti-Israel people get into arguments about whether it is categorically impossible that Kristoff’s account is true. But that’s not the correct argument to be had.